Answer an email publicly and everyone wins

By answering some of your email in a more collaborative way, you’ll increase your influence and help others be more effective.

Why?

• Others besides the original recipients can benefit from the conversation
• Others might be able to provide a better answer than you
• Others that didn’t even know they had a similar question can benefit from the conversation

Recently a colleague emailed Meredith and I to ask a question about how we do something in our ministry newsletter update process.  Instead of hitting reply and detailing the answer I suggested that Meredith, the resident expert on all things related to our newsletter, write a forum post on an internal discussion board so other staff, not just our colleague might also get the answer.

The result?

• 78 views
• 7 responses
• More tips and tricks posted
• More questions that people had
• Other colleagues helped provide even better answers to the original and subsequent questions

It took the same amount of time for Meredith to make the forum post as it would have to respond to the email, but the impact was much bigger than if she would have just hit ‘reply’.